


Tales of Golden Gods

by inadistantworld



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gods & Goddesses, Anthology, Legends, Origin Myths, Storytelling
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-14
Updated: 2019-07-14
Packaged: 2020-06-28 10:37:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,906
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19810546
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inadistantworld/pseuds/inadistantworld
Summary: A collection of legends and stories about the gods.AU where Vox Machina and the Mighty Nein are gods and goddesses and have some interesting stories worth telling, such as the creation of mankind, how day and night became separate things, and how they have protected mankind from many different evils. Tags to be updated as we go on





	1. An Index of the Gods

There are many gods.

There is a goddess of nature and growth and she wears a cloak of crisp leaves and has antlers. Many mortals have met her, she is a goddess who rarely resists a sad soul in the woods or a curious wanderer. She always has food for those who want it and a wise word or two mixed with almost nervous laughter, something that one doesn’t expect from a goddess.

With her is a god of nature and decay and he is so tall that you have to crane your neck to look up at him and he has vibrant pink hair and wears soft green like lichen. He comes when you call if you ask the right question, and he has the answers you need to hear, though he is not as familiar with the mortal world and often comes with questions of his own. He once asked me “What is a candle?”

There is a god of rage and war and most of all loyalty. He is not particularly bright, but I have come to believe that knowing the answers to the world might not be as important as knowing who it is you are willing to stand for.

Beside him is the goddess of battle and loss. Like some gods she was once mortal. The memories of her mortal life are only of a woman she loved and the pain of losing her, and that pain led to her ascension. It should not come as a surprise that both she and her counterpart, the god of rage, are both the god and goddess of friendship. Strength that great comes from those we love.

There is a god of the moment. Of leaving the past behind and leaving the future for tomorrow. A god of wine and fruit at its peak ripeness and of laughter. He walks among the mortals in disguise, causing small acts of mayhem purely to make people smile and perhaps learn something important before he disappears again. I’ve met him twice. Once he took my pants.

To his left is the god of the past and knowledge. He is a god of study, of effort, of determination, of books and logic. Being the god of the past is a lesser known fact about him, but it is readily available to those willing to do a little digging. He is the god of the things we regret, the things we seek to atone for, to fix.

To the right of the god of the moment is the goddess of the future, though people rarely call her that. They call her the goddess of the fuck ups. The goddess of those with good intentions but struggle with the execution. She is the goddess of the future, of planning and working to be better than before, the goddess of preparation and thinking ahead. But those who truly worship her know her for who she truly is, the goddess who guides the ones who can’t seem to get it right.

There is a trickster god, he is also the god of song. He is, more quietly, the god of recovery and making amends. He has a voice like honey and a quicker wit than any god or mortal. He is a god who is selfish, but it does not keep him from love. And those who have lost everything else find the strength to try again in him.

And there is a trickster goddess who is also the goddess of love in all its forms. Her pranks are harmless and her efforts usually come from a desire to make those around her smile and laugh. She loves the world and her family and her friends and those who need her love with a purity and strength that most would not be able to imagine.

There is a goddess of healing and protection. She is the goddess who helps us when we are in our greatest need, but she is more surprising in her private moments. She is funny and rash and scarred from her own battles, not the quiet and gentle soul that they often portray her as. She is, more privately, a third god of war. She is the god of necessary bloodshed, of the battered shield.

There is a god of wealth and ambition. Of grand goals and hopes and dreams and the wealth we seek from those things. Not always monetary wealth, though it never hurts to place a gold piece at an altar of his in hopes that it catches his eye as he has always liked the color, but wealth that comes in the shape of experiences, friends, adventure, and things we rarely expect to find.

There is a goddess of courage. She, like the god of wealth, can often be bribed for a little bit of attention with shiny things, though buttons work just as well for her. She is a collector and she collects things nobody wants, she knows the value of things like that. She is the goddess of bravery through fear, of change that shapes us, of the things we fear and what it takes to face them.

There is a god curiosity and impulse. He is the god of making decisions on the fly, of reaching out to touch something unknown, of making deals without knowing their full repercussions. He is protector of those who are “faking it until they make it” and he is ever changing, for his true title is the god of change, but change can only come after curiosity.

Then there is the god of the moon. He wears a cloak of black feathers and his clothes are made from swathes of the night sky and in them can be seen distant stars. He is known by the snake who observes the world with him and his boots that give him impossible speed. He is the god of the moon, of stealth and the rash decisions we make when we are in the dark.

His twin is the goddess of the sun. She can be tempted with gold, but she is more easily swayed by those with nothing except for great need. She is known by the blue feathers she wears, the strands of gold in her hair, the bow slung across her back, and the broom she uses to traverse the sky. She is the goddess of warmth and life and of the hunt.

And finally there is the god of the underworld. He was once a man too, one of the first men, back when the Shattered Gods had been free to roam and their demons had walked with them. One of these demons, a demon of smoke and deceit and false promises, possessed him. He was saved by the Golden Gods, the first generation of gods who sought to protect humanity, but to save him he was made a god himself. His domain would not be as abstract as some of the others, it would be physical. He would guard the underworld. He would see to it that souls went where they were supposed to go and that the Shattered Gods stayed broken and locked away. His demon, while dead and gone, had left a power in him that the god of the underworld mastered and used for himself.

There are many gods who watch over our world and they have an infinite amount of stories. I can’t tell them all to you, but perhaps I can tell you some of my favorites.


	2. The Origin of Night and Day

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The sun and the moon once lived together and the sky was painted with all the colors that pass through our sky in a day. Before the gods of time came to be and before night and day split into two the goddess of the Sun, Vex'ahlia, met the god of the underworld, Percival.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The whole gods thing was sparked by art I've seen of Vex and Vax as gods of the sun and the moon and I just couldn't let go of it, so it's only right this be the first one. Can't promise when the next one will be up, like I said this is a warm up for some other gods stuff I'm working on for a game and some more stuff for a couple books I'm chipping away at, but I do love some of what I'm doing here and I hope you think it's at least a little fun

The gods love with just as much fire as we do. Which makes sense when you know that we were the ones who taught it to the gods.

Well, perhaps that is not a good way to phrase it. We did not teach the gods love, we did not create emotions for them, but we did show them the fire in emotion. Our lives are so short that we can do nothing but feel everything in tidal waves, but in the beginning the gods felt everything in slow and sluggish ways. They were thousands of years old before the first woman stood alone on the cliffs where she was created and wept at the beauty of the universe. They had never wept and none of their other creations had ever wept. Trees sighed and wolves howled but nothing had ever _cried_ before.

The gods did not learn emotion from us. When The Sun and The Moon came into existence they came into it holding hands in our sky and they loved each other in the way all siblings love each other, and they showed it in the way siblings tend to. They made jokes, they called each other names, and they talked at great length about things they didn’t tell anyone else. But the gods did not know how to fall in love. And the gods did not know the art of romance.

So when the first woman went to the tallest tree and pressed her hand against the bark and _wished_ for company beyond that of howling wolves and sighing trees, the gods heard and because they loved her so much for showing them how to cry, they gave her what she asked for and the trunk of the tree split and a man stepped out.

And the gods watched eagerly, wondering if he too would cry, and instead he laughed, because the world was filled with things that brought him joy. The gods had felt happiness before and the gods knew how to laugh, but they had not laughed like he did and they had not felt such overwhelming joy as he did.

They wished for more company, and because the gods loved them so they gave them more company until there were many and they no longer felt lonely. And every time one stepped from the trunk of a tree they would show the gods something amazing. They would show fear at the great unknown. Curiosity of the world. Anger at small slight against them. Lust for one another. Pride in their work. And so much more.

And then they showed the gods romance.

It was expressed in tender touches, flowers and gifts, loving gazes, songs, speeches, wordlessness. And it was reciprocated with rosy cheeks, a gentle squeeze of the hand, laughter, tears, and invitations inside. And it was celebrated with weddings and long walks to no where in particular so they could talk and sharing a home and, well there was sex as well but that was nothing new to the world.

And the gods were amazed.

Our lives are so short and filled with so much wonder that we have little option but to feel strongly. Until the creation of the first woman who wept on the cliffs the gods believed their lives were too long and filled with too much of the same to feel very strongly at all. They would laugh at their jokes and smile at their creations and build new things and so on, but their emotion was subtle and slow. When I say we taught the gods to feel the great waves of emotion what I mean to say is we taught the gods their humanity.

This is the story of The Sun and The Architect, a god who fell in love for the first time and the once human now god who experienced his humanity only after his ascension.

In the beginning there was no difference in day and night. The sky was made up of swirls of pale blue and black with twinkling stars and where they met were what we now know as the colors of the sunrise and the sunset. The sun and the moon lived in the sky together side by side. This was before time, as day and night were one and mankind had no need of it. The gods of time would come later, after The Shattering when day and night became two.

The Shattering had little to do with the separation, however. One might instead blame The Architect, Percival, for it all started when the gods saw the smoke threatening to strangle him and saved him by turning him into a god. The truth though is that the gods learned to fall in love and when we fall in love sometimes things change, so it is only to be expected that the world change when the gods do so.

The Sun, Vex’ahlia (the gods have names as well, though they are rarely used because names feel too human for us to use. Maybe that is why they like when the scribes and storytellers use them.) had been the first of the gods to approach Percy when he was mortal. The others slowly appeared in their mortal forms behind her, but she was the one who held her hand out to him and smiled down at him with a soft and gentle smile. “I can help you.”

Percival had no questions about who she was. She had strands of pure golden light in her hair and the freckles on her shoulders glowed against her tawny brown skin. Neither did he have questions about what she was talking about. Smoke curled around his body, squeezing him tightly and making it harder to breathe, and every breath he sucked in tasted of sulfur and settled deep in his gut.

Percival had been possessed by one of the creations of the Shattered, though they had been whole at the time. They had watched our gods open trees to bring forth humanity and they broke open boulders to bring demons into the world. Percy was the first (and so far only) one to be possessed by one of these demons. And he was sure that if he kept resisting it would kill him, and it would likely still kill him if he stopped resisting.

He went to take Vex’ahlia’s hand but she pulled back just slightly, just enough to give him pause, and she said, “You will never be able to go back. You will be one of us and you will have to give up everything you know.”

He placed his hand in hers and in doing so he gave himself over to her.

He was the first god to be torn from his mortality, though he had not been like most of mankind at the time. He had been reserved, disguising and protecting himself with walls and masks, which was perhaps why the gods loved him so. He, like them, was still learning how to be human.

Percy would go on to build the weapons used to Shatter the gods who went to war with them and he would also build their prisons. He would ferry lost souls to their place in the underworld and guard the prisons of the Shattered Gods and he would build amazing new things that would sometimes make their way out into our world. Sometimes they would be gifts, clocks that told time once day and night were two and the gods of time had come into being. Sometimes they would be stolen. My predecessors passed down stories of when the first gun touched the hands of a mortal and the rage that followed.

These stories are for other days, though.

In the interest of time I will skim over some pieces. To ignore them completely wouldn’t do this story justice, but the gods are old and have known each other for far too long for me to tell you everything. Instead I will tell you what is most important.

Percival was alone. He had been mortal and was now much more. He would go by many names, perhaps because he had not named himself like the other gods save for Vex’ahlia and Vax’ildan, perhaps it is mortal to want many names and titles. He would be Percival or Percy to his friends, the other gods who both made the universe organized and also sowed chaos upon it, and he would be The Ferryman when they spoke of him as the one who helped them to their afterlife. He was The Warden when he was watching over the Shattered.

Most commonly he is The Architect, the one who makes beautiful things for both gods and mortals. He was the one who gave us fire, for he had seen Vex’ahlia, The Sun, in person and he had seen the fire of her bow and the fire that ringed her form when she was racing through the sky and he had seen fire in a way no mortal had. On earth he had seen the danger of fire, the fear that came with it, the destruction. With Vex’ahlia it held those qualities as well, for she was dangerous and passionate and all consuming (Percival himself called her that when speaking to one of my predecessors, it has always stuck with me. The scribe wrote about how his eyes looked and the gentle sigh that passed his lips as well, but I am getting ahead of myself). And despite all of that she was still controlled when she needed to be, she was protective and bright and the she never stayed still.

Percival gave us the knowledge we needed to use fire, the tools we needed to stop feeling fear of fire, so that we would understand the beauty of her. The others had never been mortal, they had never experienced a world without love and respect and fear for her fire all wrapped into one, and Percy felt it was his duty to make the world understand.

It is likely obvious why this is such an important beginning.

Percival’s first act as a god was to come back to earth with the tools needed to see Vex’ahlia in her truest form, both dangerous and terrifying, but beautiful and warm and the thing that brought people close to one another quite literally. Percy have them the first hearth, the first place to gather with family and cook food and shine light upon one another.

And Vex’ahlia watched on in wonder, for she had wondered if this was a piece of her that mankind could never love, that would only bring harm upon them, that would tear their world apart. Yes, we taught them fear and the feeling of not being enough as well.

Vex’ahlia was the first god allowed to Percival’s new home, the underworld, which until now had been just where souls went and milled about because there had not been a god who understood mortality to take it over. And Percival had given her a full tour and she would help him build a section for souls of, what the scribes who spoke with the gods themselves about it affectionately called, strays. Those who had no one else, those who needed her love most of all. There are countless stories in our library about these “strays” she was known for getting involved with in secret. This is good to know because this was a strange moment for them both. Vex’ahlia was the first invited to Percival’s private realm, and the first to help him build onto it. The others would come as well, Keyleth more frequently than any other, but once again those are other stories. It also shows that we taught the gods loneliness. We taught them the joy that comes with company and the sadness that follows without it. For when Vex left his realm to join her brother back in the sky they both wished she would return.

Now perhaps you might call me a liar. I said that Vex had left her place in the sky with her brother, wouldn’t that mean that it had been night? The world was different back then. The colors of the sky had stained the universe, they had seeped deep into it and it took a long time for that to wash away and for them to become two. It is why even when the moon and the sun are in the sky together now it is still day and not a mix of both like it once was.

There were many more moments, great and small. He helped her build a broom she would ride across the sky with, so she may travel faster. She would visit his realm and watch him work quietly, noticing how his hands moved as he would forge and sew and sculpt new corners for people to go to and new gifts to bring to the world and new gifts for her as well. She showed him the world from her place in the sky, and from the ground. She showed him where the cliffs where they had created the first woman and he showed her the place where he had been born. And she helped him harness the smoke that the remnants of the demon left behind, something for him to wield and control rather than fear the reawakening of. She touched his hand. He watched the sky with adoration when she could not see him. She winked. He gave her gifts.

She told him she loved him when she thought he could not hear.

It had happened while he forged the god breaking weapons. More accurately it happened when she had forced him to sleep, put him to bed with the promise of work tomorrow and that even if he finished in that very moment they would not be able to use them. She told him that even gods must sleep, though admittedly more rarely, and that she needed him at his very best.

And she watched over him to make sure he slept long and deep, she knew he was likely to get up again if she left.

And then she said his name, softly and with hopes that he would not hear but that perhaps he would know. And if he woke and still did not know, well at least she had said it and no longer had to ache over it.

She said his name again and he did not stir.

She said it a third time, for you should do all things three times if you mean them.

Still, he did not wake.

“Percival, my heart is yours,” she whispered. She had told him she loved him, she loved all of her friends, they were family. Telling him that she had given him her heart…well she had watched humanity long enough to know the difference of those words. Still, Percy slept.

And she sat vigil over him and was satisfied when he woke and yawned and stretched his arms high above his head a returned to work.

Percival had heard, though. Of all the gods one might expect him to understand humanity and the pure emotion that we brought to the world most of all, but Percy had always been rather awful at being human. He had been distant and logical and perhaps the only thing he experienced in a very human way was arrogance. Before you call blasphemy, Percival is quite aware of his shortcomings. The gods enjoy imperfection, the gods enjoy what it is to be human, and it took a long time for Percival to admit his faults or to encourage us storytellers and scribes to talk about them like this. I believe that the greatest turning point in his life was Lady Vex’ahlia. I do not think Percy had ever really looked at the sun before she held her hand out to him and I believe that perhaps it was becoming a god that made him almost human.

I digress.

Percival had heard her confession, but he did not speak and he did not make it known that he had been awake when she told him. He took his time deciding how to respond. And in that time not much changed. He still talked to her, he still forged his great weapon and made plans with his allies, he still ferried souls to their destinations, still let his fingers linger when he touched her shoulder, still let his eyes catch on the sharp edges of her jaw, still marveled at the curve of her lips and the heat of her skin when she touched him. Nothing changed after Vex’s confession because Percy still loved her as he had before.

The night before the Shattering the gods gathered in secret. They drank of godly wine and ate of godly food and Scanlan sang songs at their table and Keyleth spoke of the world they would save and they prepared in the way that gods do for war. And then they prepared in the way that humans do, searching for a small moment of quiet before it all. Keyleth and Vax wandered on earth for a time, finding hidden places and talking in soft voices. Pike and Grog and Scanlan created small amounts of mayhem, they drank and talked and joked until the three of them passed out. Pike would heal them in the morning of their hangovers but there was something impossibly special about feeling normal for a few more moments. Tary, a tinkerer in his own right, worked away at his automaton and worked on his own book. We have a copy here. His first one was not particularly good, but if you’re interested in seeing the events before the Shattering through his eyes I can bring it out for you.

Percival had to return to his underworld. He did not like to leave it for long, he had work to do and while there were almost gods and powerful beings who worked with him, he always liked to be around to keep an eye on things. And Vex’ahlia went with him, because the quiet she wanted before a war the likes of which the world had never seen was the quiet she had with Percy.

Percy had always loved to make Vex’ahlia gifts. That night he showed her one more. It was another piece of the underworld, forged solely for her instead of for the souls who needed places to go. It was not empty, however, Vex’ahlia never did like silence, it was just filled with other kinds of creatures, birds and bears and beasts great and small. Percy gave it to her, for she deserved a place that belonged to her. He called it “a home”, something almost too human for a god. Their home was the universe, their domain larger than any of us could understand, and it was shared with all others like them.

But Percy had been human once and Percy had his underworld, which technically was shared with the other gods but in reality it was his, and Percy knew the importance of a home. And Percy knew the importance of Vex’ahlia.

She stood before him, shocked beyond belief and with that feeling welling up inside her once more, overwhelming love for this man. But she remembered the last time she told him so and she could not bear to tell him now when his crystal blue eyes were locked onto her deep brown ones, she could not imagine the look in his eyes before he told her that he did not feel the same way and she could not imagine losing him the night before the war. And in the last moment her eyes flicked away and she thanked him and told him that she had learned so much from him.

And he smiled and he kissed her.

After the Shattering, which is a story on its own and not terribly important in this one, Vex’ahlia and Percival were incredibly human for gods. Vex’ahlia would spend time in the sky and on earth, watching over the world and doing her part in creating a better life for the people in it. And when she had finished for a time and grown tired of her work and missed her love, she would go to the underworld where Percival would set down his tools upon seeing her. And they would retire to her home, which was at first a forest all to themselves and they slowly built a home into it with many human comforts. And so the sun began to leave the sky more and more regularly.

Vax’ildan, the god of the moon and the twin brother to the sun and the man who loved the goddess Keyleth began to leave the sky to be with his love, to travel and experience the world the way that she did. And so the moon began to leave our sky.

It was a slow change. The swirled colors of night and day were deep stains on the canvas of our sky, but slowly they became two separate things. In the day our sky is pale blue and the sun shines high above us and in the night the black blankets the sky and the stars look down upon us like kind eyes keeping watch while we sleep. They still see each other, the days where the moon lingers in the sky or when the sun hardly goes down in the summer. And they are still troublemaking siblings, like when the moon blocks the sun completely in an eclipse, teasing his sister and stealing her spotlight.

But there was once a time when the sky was different and there was no day and night. And there was a time when the gods did not know love the way that they do now.

**Author's Note:**

> Something I've been playing around with for a long while now but haven't really worked on until recently. I just love worldbuilding so much and I love gods and legends and this kind of stuff so much and I just want to do more and more of it. I know it's pretty niche but I've been using this as a warm up for some stuff I've been working on for a Choose Your Own Adventure game which has a lot of gods and history to the world that I probably won't put in the game but that I love fleshing out.  
> The plan is to just post different legends and stories of the gods here, so I guess if you have anything you want to see let me know and if you just think it's fun or interesting let me know about that too.


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